What happened
A developer has created ZIL, a small relational language that maps how code declarations, requirements, documents, tests, and tasks relate to each other inside a Lean 4 project. It uses a tuple model inspired by Google's Zanzibar authorization system, allowing projects to store and query relationships such as which declaration implements a requirement, which theorem validates a component, or which modules depend on a changed file.
Why it matters
Developers, code reviewers, CI tools, documentation generators, and AI assistants can query the same stored relationship map to understand project structure, track implementation coverage, and calculate the impact of changes. This shared context is particularly useful for AI-assisted workflows, where assistants need to understand how code pieces fit together and what downstream effects a change will have.
What to watch
The repository is pinned to Lean 4 and includes progressive examples (01–06) runnable via `lake env lean examples/lean/` and a Makefile. The system supports three trust levels for relationships (asserted, graphDerived, certified), allows change impact rules to propagate through dependency chains, and uses Lean environment extensions for persistence; tools can exchange project maps via ZILX/1 snapshots and ZILD/1 deltas.
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ZIL addresses a practical gap in code project organization: connecting code declarations to the requirements, documents, and tasks they serve. By adapting Google's Zanzibar tuple model—designed for authorization systems—to software development, the project creates a bridge between what developers, tools, and AI assistants need to know about a codebase. The relationship model is simple (subject–relation–object) but expressive enough to handle both structural facts (which module depends on which declaration) and derived insights (which components are affected by a change).
The integration with Lean 4 is strategic. Lean already verifies code correctness; ZIL adds a layer of project-wide context that Lean does not track. By storing relationships as Lean environment extensions, ZIL ensures they persist with compiled code and are accessible to any tool that imports the project. This design allows AI assistants, documentation generators, and CI tools to reason about not just whether code is correct, but why it exists and what it connects to.
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